Morus: Tardy idiot?
We started planting Illinois
Everbearing Mulberries
in our chicken
pastures a couple of
years ago as future chicken feed. Despite a lot of neglect, one
of the trees from 2011 looks like it's going to make a few fruits this
year.
Lee Reich likes to say that the
mulberry genus name Morus refers to the plant's
tendency to flower late so it's seldom nipped by frost. Since my
grasp of Latin is nonexistant, I'm going
to assume he's right. But is the beginning of April actually
late? Or is my mulberry tree more closely related to the Greek
definition of Morus --- "idiot"?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Mona --- Well, it looks like mine may fruit for the first time at one year in the ground. Of course, I won't expect many fruits, but presumably within a few years, it will be bearing heavily.
Ours branched out a bit and roughly doubled in height, I think, during that first year. That's despite my very bad weeding job --- I let it get pretty much overwhelmed last summer!
I live in Illinois, and on my property, mulberries are weeds. Once you get one established, you will probably have them forever. I'd say these things can grow ten feet in a year. I think it is the birds that spread the seed around. Sorry I haven't watched too closely to see how soon they start fruiting.
All that being said, I am looking forward to feeding some mulberries to my hens. I have heard good things about the quality of eggs when the hens have been eating mulberries.
I also use them as an indicator of when the black raspberries will ripen. The mulberries seem to come about a week before the black raspberries.